Travelling over for the Puffer from Germany and see that the crossing tolls have changed at its not pay at the barrier any more..

Is it a case of making an account and paying ahead of the trip, or waiting until afterwards and paying before midnight on the day of travel.. ?

German car, German plates ..

You can set up an account beforehand, which reduces the fee from £2.50 to £1.66, each way.

I recently went through and paid after – using the below link

https://www.dartford-crossing-charge.service.gov.uk/Home/Choose

Great, thanks…

Why not just wait and see if you get a bill?

You don’t get a bill afaik just a penalty charge / fine.

Finally they’ve sorted that out. My biggest hate of travelling to dover is queing for that damn bridge every time, I’m sure its not the size of the bridge thats the slowing factor its the queing at the barriers that causes a permanent 3-5 mile tail back.

No barriers = less traffic now?

Why not just wait and see if you get a bill?

Because that will cost £35/£70 instead of £1.66.

They say they use foreign debt collection agencies to collect penalty fares.

I expect that relies entirely on whether each country’s car+driver registration agency supports the dishing out of owner details to debt collectors like DVLA does in UK for parking scam companies.

I imagine that Germany does not willingly give out such information.

But at £1.66 per crossing, doing it legit probably makes sense. But you have to load up the account with £10 or £20, I understand. No idea if you can ever get the remainder back if you close the a/c.

I’d probably stick my plates on my parents’ or brother’s a/c should I need to go that way. Although more likely it’d be a rental car from London City airport (so god knows how that’s going to work), and just use the other tunnel or Woolwich ferry for free.

Brick man- yep, in a month of using the bridge, every night of the working week I’ve not had to queue at all. Tunnel is still bad though as you have to go through barriers until they finish altering the road network.

Booked two journeys, all sorted. Puffer here we come..

So even if you only use it once there’s a minimum charge of £20?

@ rick….

I’m interested to know about this. Much hassle to set up? What is the minimum amount you can enter?
Going to have to make two trips over to the UK this year.

you can pay online or by phone by midnight the day after using it and I’m sure you just pay the £2.50 or whatever

There is no need to set up an account, it’s exactly the same rules as congestion charge. You either pay on account, pay before journey, pay after journey via phone, shops or online..

Regards regular Dartford crosser.

thread ressurection…

what a joke!

fortunately we’re arriving at 1am so get away with having to pay, but for the amount of hassle for the sake of 2.50gbp it just seems like they are hoping to make masses of fines to unsuspecting foreigners.

are there signs in various languages explaining?

anyone been over on foreign plates and not paid and got away with it?

seems like real piss take. i remember when it cost 70p for a car. how many times has that bridge been paid for now?

And the online payment service isn’t working.

I remember when they said once it’s paid for, no more charges…..yeah right.

Completely forgot about this when we traveled back.

Foreign plates, paid a couple of days later, never heard anything.

The 35 quid if you forget is an utter rip off….also, having to have internet connection could be a real pain for the foreigners.

They should have a lane or two for those that want to pay there and then. Imagine if you had to pay on the internet when travelling through France or German, pain in the butt.

And the online payment service isn’t working.

I had to pay this recently and it took a couple of attempts to get it to work. Had to use IE rather than Chrome.

Actually, this is a timely thread bump.

I went through the crossing a couple of weeks ago, over to France, promptly forgot all about it.

Came home ~10 days later, got home and logged on to pay both crossings. There’s no tie in to what you owe, just asks what you want to pay. I put in two fares, paid my fiver and that was that.

Am I still likely to get a penalty charge for late payment, or should that be done and dusted now?